


To the Forces That Be

by Duchesse



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Amnesia, Angst, Death, F/M, Female Reader, Humor, Reader-Insert, Romance, Sci-Fi, Smut, Tragedy, this is just one of those fics for fun
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-04-04
Updated: 2016-04-12
Packaged: 2018-05-31 06:45:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,281
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6459988
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Duchesse/pseuds/Duchesse
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Kylo Ren awakens from a torturous slumber, he's faced with the crisis of not knowing where he is or who he is. To make matters worse, he has to rely on your word for the truth and the peculiarity of your town's Oracles.</p><p>[Ben Solo x Reader] / [Kylo Ren x Reader].</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Thousands of voices screamed a chorus of agony in his mind. They swirled through his consciousness like tendrils of black smoke, ensnaring him at his attempts to break free yet he couldn’t touch them with his own fingers. He could feel the physical exertion to lift his arms, stretching through the abyss and the sharp wails, clawing at everything around him. The throbbing in his head lessened as the voices mellowed, their cries softened into mocking laughter at his desperation.

This was worse, he thought. Surely the screams would have killed him, but the laughter wouldn’t. It would reverberate through his mind, his thoughts would ricochet and meld with the laughter. Gritting his teeth, his fingers wound through his black hair and he pulled at the thick strands, eventually boxing his ears off. The voices were so much louder now, almost as though he had captured them in his palm and forced them into his ears. His head wouldn’t stop hurting.

Punishment. This torture was punishment, that’s what it was. He caught himself trying to refute it, but he wasn’t sure why. What had he done to deserve this? He struggled to collect his thoughts, string together cohesive events that would give him an answer. Every step of the way, he swatted the voices away but they always swarmed back.

He didn’t deserve this. He didn’t deserve this. He did deserve this.

He did.

He didn’t.

He did. Perhaps, but why?

The voices were frightened now, they uncoiled from his body and slithered far into the depths of his mind. There was a fear to open his ears and to open his eyes, even as the voices cowered away and silenced themselves. Surrounded with his thoughts and the darkness around him, he was suddenly so cold and alone. This was not the solace he sought.

When a new voice pierced through the heavy shroud, he was drawn to it. It wasn’t a bright light that beckoned him forward, nor was it a sinister call from the abyss–it was gray and unassuming. He was allured by the change and followed the voice, he couldn’t understand the tongue in which it spoke.

Louder. It grew more distinct and coherent until an abrupt shout sent tremors coursing through his body, his body stiffened and his fingers curled tightly, and his eyes flew open to a grey ceiling. The ripples of relief he felt was followed by a rush of air from between his quivering lips.

He quickly sucked air back into his lungs when that same voice from before spoke, again in the language he was unfamiliar with. Despite the dull throbs in his temple and the rags cradling his neck, he was able to lift his eyes to rest them on you.

You continued to speak to him easily, uttering words that didn’t have a meaning to him. He observed you closely from the uncomfortable angle in which he was positioned on a cot, he assumed. As you rose from your seat next to him, you gestured with broad sweeps of your arms, and sharp jabs at the air when you pointed. Instead of answering, he followed your motions to try to get a grasp of what you were trying to tell him.

This gave him the opportunity to scope out his surroundings as well. An old house made from stone, cracked and chipping from time. Layers of dust clung to every surface and dulled the beauty of the various trinkets scattered across the floor and shelves. His eyes were drawn back to your form when he realized you stopped talking and were staring at him with a sheepish smile.

“Sorry. Sometimes, I slip back into old habits.” You were speaking Basic now, though your voice was tinged with an accent he couldn’t place. But, there was no point in wasting time.

“Where am I?”

You seemed to consider his question for a moment, lifting your chin slightly while you held his stare and pulled a seat underneath you. “You are in Crzeisk, it’s a town to the west of the city of Mell.”

He wasn’t satisfied by that answer. “What planet?”

“Balyss.”

It wasn’t a planet he had any knowledge of, this agitated him more than what it should have had. He exhaled sharply through his nose and set his jaw as he propped his body up with his elbows and sat up. Just as you launched out of your seat towards the cot, a searing pain shot through his thigh and chest, the thing fabric covering his body burned against his flesh. He collapsed on the cot and swallowed a yell, nostrils flaring as he adjusted his body to alleviate the pain.

You did nothing but watch, a little concerned and a little amused.

“Don’t move too much, you were in bad shape when we found you. I was really worried about that situation with your face,” you explained, drawing a line from above your right eyebrow to your jaw on the left side. “Very nice scar.”

He reached for his face too quickly, feeling the raised and scabbing flesh. Ignoring the ache beneath his fingertips as he repeatedly traced the shape, he felt something indescribable building in his gut. The anger was there, he felt justified in feeling it without knowing why.

Once again, he faced with the dilemma of not knowing why or how. Why he was here. How it all happened. It unsettled him greatly that he couldn’t conjure up a factual answer; it was all conjecture.

At last, he allowed his body to rest against sheets on the cot and gazed at the ceiling through eyes clouded with conflict. The anger in him wouldn’t rest, the frustration and confusion of the situation at hand only teetered that boiling kettle. You offered very little insight into it.

He didn’t bother to look at you when you asked for his name, arms draped across your thighs as you sat on the end of your seat, tipping the chair on two legs. He suspected this was your way of trying to lighten the mood.

“It’ll make things less strange,” you reasoned, offering your name afterwards in the hopes of encouraging him.

He followed the length of the cracks in the ceiling, searching for a pattern in them. It seemed foolhardy to volunteer his name to someone he didn’t know under circumstances such as these–even a fake name was too generous. Truthfully, his name was something he had been scouring his brain for the entire time. Something that gave him a sense of identity.

A sense of him.

It was there on the tip of his tongue, dancing tauntingly. With it came a voice that left him uncomfortable with a sense of vague familiarity. It was a first.

The voice was abrupt and powerful, yet somehow desperate. He could almost picture a face to go with it. As the image fell away from his mind, he clutched the sheets at his sides tightly.

“Ben.” It left a bad taste in his mouth.

You looked up from your nails, eyes wide. “Hm?”

“My name is Ben.”


	2. Chapter 2

The summers of Balyss always resurfaced the most unpleasant memories from your childhood. It was a strange thing, recalling that past based solely on a familiar texture or sight, or smell or feeling. You thought about the times where the sun laid on your back and breathed on your neck oppressively while you turned up parched soil and withered roots. You remembered the times where you traveled to the watering holes and natural springs, the murky water seemed to bubble and swirl around you as the sand seeped into your shoes and swallowed you to the knees. In one year in particular, the cloudy water seemed to recede further from society, but to where you didn’t know.

Hysteria followed only years later. The water had fled, not a trace of moisture dampened the ground and the native amphibians, ghastly as they were but beloved, had seemed to disappear with the water. You were confused when your parents started to fight more often. The cup of water was in your hands, and you took huge gulps of it. Everything was fine. No one talked about the watering holes vanishing under the sun.

There was a problem when the natural springs beneath the wells met a similar fate. At that point, you were thirsty and listening to your parents, and pulling restlessly at your mother’s shirt. You wanted them to stop fighting and you wanted something to drink. Something to eat. Wouldn’t the spirits who gave life also give you water and food?

The Oracles were there for that reason. They were supposed to appease the spirits so everyone could survive. At least, that’s what you were told as an impressionable child with a boundless imagination and admiration of them. You loved your aunt most of all.

When you were eleven, you saw through the white, ornate robes and pedestals in which they stood for the first time. The townsfolk were desperate, their bodies gaunt with fists to the sun, and eyes flickering with a hatred you felt that you could lose yourself to. Even the more peaceful sentients joined the rest in the central square of Crzeisk, their voices and bodies meshing into one cohesive unit.

You thought the Oracles might bring about the change they demanded. Surely, the demonstration would frighten them. However, you felt a tremor of terror as the crowds quickly dispersed when one of the Oracles used his magic to blow away the sentients pushing forwards through the barriers.

Your mother wouldn’t let you speak about the power that that Oracle used. And, no one rebelled against the Oracles again.

Thereafter, everything changed. Many left with few belongings to the capital city of Mell. You and your mother followed them, leaving your father devastated while your aunt rambled on endlessly about a legacy that you knew nothing about. Even until the day your mother died, you were never given an explanation as to why she behind your father and continued your life in Mell.

“The legacy will bring her back here!” 

Those were the last words your aunt had ever exchanged with your mother, and you imagined that they weighed heavily on her until her dying breath. There were times where you wondered if that last strong grip of warmth on your hand, and taut smile was her way of telling you to be brave for what was to come. She let go of your hand that night and you have never regained that same warmth.

“Have you had many clients since your last visit?”

You adjusted the wrap on your head and shielded your eyes from the sun to see your aunt’s face more clearly. She was crouched far from you near a bush, easily sawing through thick stems with a jagged knife, her eyes never once drifted away from her task. Once she cut the plant free from the remainder of the stem, she tucked it into a woven basket with a bushel of different kinds.

Seeing her dedication encouraged you to return to doing the same. You pursed your lips while you clumsily cut the robust stem, refusing to acknowlege that she was observing you rather closely now, perhaps even smugly. You discarded your knife into the brown grass and broke the stem between your hands.

“There’s always translating work needed somewhere in Mell,” you started, flinging the large plant into your basket. You mirrored your aunt’s expression; lips twitching upward slightly at left corner, eyes crinkling as you smirked. “Just this past week I had seven clients. The two men I brought here were from Naboo. What did they want?”

Your aunt’s eyebrows flattened, the lines around her mouth and between her eyes suddenly more severe. She lowered her eyes to your basket, grappling it and her own as she rose to her feet quickly, her white robes twisted around her legs with her powerful movements.

“You can’t avoid answering me forever!” you called after her white-clad back. She continued to walk on as though your voice were nothing but the wind whistling around her. It was this quality of your aunt’s that you hated more than anything, though you would be lying if you said there weren’t a few more.

Rolling your eyes upwards, you slouched forward as you rose to your feet and sheathed the knife before pursuing her. Even with the long strides you took in her direction, it felt as though you would never match her pace.

“They’re my clients. I don’t know how you’re accommodating them without my help. You can barely speak Basic, can any of the other Oracles?” 

You were nearly out of breath when you reached her, the sudden proximity of her back made you stumble into her, gripping her arms to keep yourself from teetering over to the ground. She swayed with your movements as though she were a doll to manipulate at will, you thought she might collapse under your weight. As you righted your posture, you peered towards her face to find her transfixed with something ahead.

Following her gaze, you found yourself enchanted by the vast sea of brown dancing with the breeze. As you fixed your attention from the grass to the towering trees with shriveling, dead leaves and beyond, you couldn’t help but have your eyes drawn to a black object in the field that you could barely discern even when you squinted and took several experimental steps towards it.

Those first steps turned into three, four, and five more. You were reluctant at first, afraid to ease yourself away from the protection that your aunt’s authority provided. But, you couldn’t take your eyes off of that black and the contrast it created with everything else around it. You weren’t sure when you started walking towards it, your legs carrying you in hurried strides and soon a run that whipped hot air around your face and on your scalp.

You slowed your pace as your breathing hitched seeing the black mass take the shape of a person. They laid on the ground motionless, their back facing the unforgiving leer of the sun. A twang of hope rushed through you when you noticed the black robes moving, the breath you had been holding flowed out from between your teeth forcefully as you realized it was only the wind.

There was a significant distance between yourself and the body while you circled them to the right to get a view of the face. You crouched to the ground until you were on your knees and daringly ventured closer. The features of the face were almost completely obscured by thick locks of hair darkest you had ever seen, matted against to the skin by sweat and blood. Most surprising of all was the large wound that seemed to stretch from one part of the face to the other, yet there was no blood.

The wound had been cauterized. Blasters obviously cauterized wounds upon striking flesh, but you were uncertain as to whether a blaster could cause a wound such as that.

You didn’t need to be any closer to know this person was a man and something awful had happened, but what you almost didn’t want to know. There was a part of you that plead to flee, something was wrong. A greater part was drawn in even more until you were but mere inches away, gingerly pulling the clumps of hair and blood away from his face. You felt warm, shallow breaths wisp across your skin.

“You careless child, step away from him.” The harshness of your aunt’s voice made you flinch an reel your hand against your chest, a force of habit. Your attention shifted in the direction in which she approached quickly, her hood lowered from her head to reveal what the decades had reaped.

When she didn’t say anything else, you took the initiative to do so. “This man, he needs help. We need to get him back to Crzeisk.” 

“Can you not feel it?”

You wouldn’t pretend to even know what she was asking you. Seeming to notice your confusion, your aunt joined you on the ground on the opposite side of his body, hand hovering just above his back as though there were a barrier separating the two. She refused to get any closer to him even as she studied him in great detail, occupying herself with the blood in his hair to the wounds in his shoulder and singed robes.

In that time, you had taken to patting down his sides for anything that would help determine who he was. Some indication to what planet he was from would be helpful, albeit an unreliable start. After searching carefully some time, cautiously glancing towards his face for a flinch or groan of awareness, your fingers grazed a bizarre shape beneath the cloak.

Ever so slowly you moved aside his cloak, immediately stopping when you felt as though your aunt’s eyes landed on you. After several fruitless tries, you found yourself staring at some type of object. Black and archaic in design with a crossguard that you could only describe as bizarre, you weren’t sure if you were supposed be seeing what you were.

You fidgeted uneasily on your knees as you sought to quell the clenching in your gut, and a heightened sense that something was amiss. In spite of the growing anxiety, the inexplicable guilt that you committing a heinous crime for touching it, you quickly unlatched the object from the man’s side and slid it under the cover of your bushel of plants.

“Well,” you chimed abruptly, shoving aside your basket to create a wider distance between yourself and the source of your discomfort. “We need to get him looked at, soon. He doesn’t look to be in… critical condition…”

“That would be unwise, we’re bringing an outsider to our town. We don’t know where he’s come from, what he might bring with him.” She reasoned, withdrawing her hands to her thighs and looked to you. “This isn’t a risk I can take.”

You frowned at her. “What about the Creed? Does that mean nothing to the Oracles anymore? How could you even think to turn yourself away to someone in need.”

The older woman stared at you hard, defiantly. Her eyes flitted in their sockets as she searched your expression, your eyes, the unconscious tics in your face. You never took light to her examining you so closely. As a child, she had a way of seing through your lies and guilt and ripping a confession from you. Even now as an adult, you loathed that she seemed to still have that same power, though this time she was looking for something else.

As though witnessing an unpleasant sight, she tore her eyes away from your own and held them clenched shut for sometime. When she opened them again, her entire visage lightened and the lines in her face finally softened.

“Yes, forgive me. You are right. The Creed is the way. We will take him back to Crzeisk, and we will decide what to do from there,” she affirmed her words with a nod, draping one of the man’s arms over her shoulders and waited for you to do the same.

Once situating your basket in the crook of your arm, you lifted him from the other side. As much as you wanted to be thankful towards your aunt towards your aunt, you couldn’t drown out the anxiety of the prickling of hair on the back of your neck. The basket had become so much heavier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dude. Help me think me think of a name for the aunt. :u
> 
> I do think this could have been written better, but we live and we learn. Sometimes, we don't make the same mistakes twice. Anyway, please do keep supporting this story if you like it. I have a very small window when I can actually sit down to write, so it helps if I see that people actually like the story. 
> 
> Super mega thanks to everyone who's commented and kudo'd so far. Y'all make my days a little brighter.
> 
> Here's a little more on Balyss:
> 
> Balyss itself is a planet that’s basically facing the crisis that comes with major urbanization, and overpopulation. Because of the result of the urbanization of Mell and other cities around Balyss, along with over-cultivating the lands in rural communities, Balyss is facing global warming on a pretty extreme scale and rather rapidly at that. The planet is prone to drought’s and below average rainfalls, some areas in Balyss are well know for destructive acid rains.
> 
> In the case of Crzeisk, it’s a larger town that’s used more resources than the natural land can provide, and the town is facing devastating drought with very little rainfall. So, they get most of their resources from Mell and surrounding cities. So, it’s a popular spot for trade.
> 
> Unfortunately, attitudes that the folk in Crzeisk have and are taught partially from lore and the “mystical powers” of the Oracles, are far different from what the politician’s preach in Mell. So, there’s a massive divide politically and environmentally. Mell is a city that mimics a lot of others in the galaxy and is always integrating new things, whereas Crzeisk is comfortable in its ways and tend to be wary of outsiders.
> 
> The MC in this story was born into one, then forced into another for several years of her life and struggles to strike a balance between what she grew up with opposed to how she lives now. I thought it would be an interesting dynamic to explore.
> 
> I’m trying to think of ways to use that to its full potential tho’

**Author's Note:**

> Yo. I haven't posted something in a while. This is just a little project that I wanted to have fun with. It's basically an AU of the end of The Force Awakens. Following Rey and Kylo's duel. I hope you enjoyed this and if you're interested in more of this, please let me know. It'll keep me encouraged to produce updates more often.
> 
> As of now, this is pretty much a standalone piece, but yeah. Lemme know if you want more!


End file.
